Mesoamerica · Volume 07, Belize, Honduras and the Mosquito Shore
Coconut bread
Belize (Kriol)
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Coconut bread
No fully in-tradition, precisely quantified source was found; general method only
Ingredients
- 7 to 8 cups flour
- ⅓ cup coconut oil shortening
- 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon, instant yeast
- 2 tablespoons, plus 1 teaspoon to activate the yeast sugar
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 cups fresh, or 1 tin coconut milk
Method
- Knead the flour, shortening, yeast, sugar, salt and coconut milk into a dough.
- Prove.
- Bake.
- Eat warm on its own, with butter, or with guava jelly.
Notes
No fully in-tradition, precisely quantified source for coconut bread was found for this chapter, only the general method above.
Richard Wilk records being served plain, imported white bread, itself a Mexican product rather than a Belizean one, as an honoured guest during his 1973 fieldwork, a small but telling illustration of how thoroughly colonial-era taste hierarchy in Belize ranked imported goods above real local baking.
What a modern chef changes
Controlled proof, concentrated milk
Method
- Proof the dough at a controlled, gentle temperature, using the residual warmth of a Big Green Egg run low with the lid down rather than a draughty kitchen counter, for a more even rise than an inconsistent domestic proving spot gives.
- Reduce a portion of the coconut milk separately before it goes into the dough, concentrating its flavour so the finished loaf carries real coconut character rather than the milder result a straight, unreduced tin can leave in a yeasted dough that also has to develop its own gluten structure.
- Bake on a pizza stone inside the Egg for a firmer, more evenly baked base crust than a domestic oven's tray tends to give.